The playing is always precisely balanced and unanimous, and in the finale, one is struck once again by how much a turly great string section can add to the impact of an interpretation. Abbado begins almost coolly, but the music grows inexorably into something very special indeed, as passionately elegiac as you could wish.

Record Review /
David Gutman,
Gramophone (London) / 01. July 2002

Anne Sofie von Otter sings, not surprisingly, with conviction and steady tone. Her voice has a lighter timbre than many of the singers who have recorded this music, but I found her performance to be very moving; more important, her performance is in perfect sympathy with the setting and the sound of the music . . .Those of us who perceive Boulez as a dour, mechanically precise maestro will find that perception challenged by this moving, sensitive, and emotional (yes) account of the Adagio. This isn't the heart-on-sleeve (and glacially slow) style of late Bernstein, but it's just as (or more) convincingly Mahlerian. By adopting a flowing, steady tempo, Boulez allows the variations to evolve into a coherent statement that feels absolutely right. It doesn't hurt that he is assisted by the Vienna Philharmonic in all its splendor. Boulez elicits playing of the utmost refinement, yes; but there is that indefinable "something" at work again: The final two minutes produce goose bumps.

. . . this is not only one of the greatest of Abbado's Mahler recordings, but one of the finest performances of any of the symphonies ever issued on disc. It has all the qualities that made Abbado the greatest Mahler interpreter of his age -- an unerring sense of structure and musical purpose, a profound expressive intensity that never became remotely sentimental, and the unique ability to make an orchestra apparently transcend its own capabilities.